Fittingly on Cherry and White Day, a Temple grad hosted Saturday Night Live.

Colman Domingo.

Not much to takeaway from that coincidence other than the fact that Domingo was the fifth Temple graduate to host SNL (Bill Cosby, Tom Sizemore, Bob Saget and Quinta Brunson were the others).

That’s a lot of acting and comedy talent out of one place.

Probably a few of them have gone to Cherry and White games.

That’s always been a day where the football talent in the school was the main focus and it looked like Temple put enough talent on the field to make some noise in the American Conference.

Not the kind of noise that comes with comedy or acting, but certainly singing.

As in singing T for Temple U, which we haven’t heard enough of over the last seven-straight losing seasons.

No sweeter sound at the end of football games than hearing that and to hear it more often than not certainly is the goal this season.

We really won’t know for sure until September because the structure has changed so much in the last 50 years or so.

From Wayne Hardin’s “real games” that included kickoff returns with real tackling, and a score that gave declared a Cherry winner or a White winner, we have evolved to this:

For The Cherry & The White 🍒🦉#TempleTUFF pic.twitter.com/HKD0sdUwhZ

— Temple Football (@Temple_FB) April 11, 2026

Saturday’s “game” did not include a final score, and Avery Powell took the opening kickoff to the house except he didn’t. (Nobody was allowed to tackle the returner, and the whistle was blown once Powell got by everyone.) We predicted a 60-yard field goal by Carl Hardin and what we got instead was a 58-yarder that clanged off the left post. Close enough.

The 3,000 or so Temple fans who made the trip should consider themselves lucky. Not only did Temple have perfect weather (72 degrees and sunny), but it looked more like a “real game” than what we’ve seen more of the last seven years.

For one, former rivals Pitt and Rutgers didn’t even have games. For another, there was real tackling out there. Pitt and Rutgers are doing something a lot of schools have done but Temple has stayed the course and held the closest thing to a game without a score you can have. (I’m going to follow up to see how teams that didn’t hold spring games fared, record-wise, vs. those who did and we’ll post this at the end of the season.) For another, both Stan Drayton and Rod Carey avoided contact whenever possible.

There was plenty of contact on Saturday.

Head coach K.C. Keeler took the microphone and exactly 2 p.m. and said: “I want to welcome the greatest fans in the world. You are my people.”

Then the hitting began.

It’s always hard to tell the football end of things when the good guys are playing the good guys. When Jaxon Smolik throws a sidearm pass simultaneously 20 yards across his body and 40 yards downfield for a touchdown, it’s a great throw, sure, but then you worry about the defense.

When the defense shuts down the running game, you worry about the offensive line and on and on.

One thing we do know is that Smolik, Penn State’s third-string QB last year, looks like he has more ability than Ajani Sheppard, who has a backup at both Rutgers and Washington State yet that might have not been fair to Sheppard because quarterbacks weren’t allowed to show their open-field running ability.

If I had to give an honest evaluation, Evan Simon looked much better in last year’s spring game than both Smolik and Sheppard and that’s a concern.

Keeler said summer practice basically begins on June 1 and I for one am hoping that true freshman Lamar Best balls out and makes the starting quarterback decision for Rhode Island a three-way dilemma. Put it this way: Had BYU named a starter after spring ball, Bear Bachmeier would not have had a chance to lead the Cougars to an 11-1 regular season. Like Best, he didn’t participate in spring ball. Like Bachmeier, Best has the “it” factor and is both dynamic and explosive. Can’t say I saw dynamic and explosive in either of the two quarterbacks on Saturday. Maybe consistent and steady are the best compliments I can muster at this point.

Other than that, the major takeaway is that the defensive line–the second area of concern–had a great spring and pressuring the quarterback will be improved over a year ago.

Does that mean more renditions of T for Temple U this year than last?

Who knows but judging from the way the current players sounded belting out a tune, maybe a SNL hosting gig is in one of their futures.

Friday: 5 Biggest Surprises from Spring Ball